


A Rusted Out World

by Wigfrid



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-06-13 04:52:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15356658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wigfrid/pseuds/Wigfrid
Summary: I'm starting something new! Let's see where it goes.





	1. Chapter 1

Vee smells like blood today. It’s infused in her skin, the scent stronger when she changes clothing, when she stretches. She can smell it in her sweat, in the divot between her thighs. 

She isn’t bleeding yet but she can tell the time in near. Her breasts ache, her stomach feels heavy and this morning she wakes still exhausted. She dreamt of endless circles last night, of music so beautiful it made her sick with bliss, of bleeding heels and toenails torn away without a thought. 

It was a nightmare. 

Dia isn’t home when Vee leaves her room but the long howl of the wind against the ship’s exterior makes their home feel less than empty despite the lonely echo of her steps. She doesn’t want to admit it (not with that dream still clawing at the back of her lids) but she knows where Dia must be, knows that tonight, dusk is falling earlier than it has in a long while. 

She’s probably pregaming with her boys, drinking whatever toxic blends they’ve brewed since the last circle. Alcohol makes the faux circles feel more realistic, mimics the lack of control the music inspires. It’s a cheap duplication but still close enough to make the thought sickening. Dia has never seen the real thing, doesn’t know what the spell actually feels like. She’s lucky. 

She doesn’t know it but she is. 

Breakfast is the right thing to start her day with, some nourishment to soothe the ache in her belly but Vee steps out onto the deck first. The day is cold, despite the still long summer hours. The air in the city tastes vaguely of ash but out here, in the docks, it mostly smells of brine. The waves lap against the exterior of the ship, brushing rust and barnacles onto the side like a heady lacquer. 

It’s the metallic nature of the ship that makes her feel secure. This far out, on the edge of the city, next to something so vast and so completely ruled by nature, Vee would normally feel uneasy, rocked with that terrible mixture of longing and bone deep dread. But the steel keeps the feeling muted and the fish keep her and Dia fed.

The protein is a good barter point at the market, even if they fish up the occasional gem stone or mewling half child. The gemstone rots into seaweed quickly enough and the crocodile tears dry as soon as the fish baby takes a deep breath of the rusted metallic air. They just toss it back, ears a little achy and eyes a little wet. 

They know better than to sympathize with the creature…or at least Vee knows. Sometimes she catches Dia watching it, the way it circles the boat a few times before vanishing into the depths, it’s chubby hands reaching upwards, acting in all the world like a desperate child weakening in the heavy tides. 

The Fae are clever actors, manipulative and cruel. Vee knows this but when Dia comes stumbling home, body limp from the booze on her breath and eyes dazed from the half remembered music, Vee questions her loyalty. She would never have pegged her sister as a Romanticist or a budding consort but each time she feels further from her, like the new connection she is forming has severed the one they once had between them. It hurts to see her like this. It scares her and when she’s being honest with herself, it makes her angry. 

Vee wraps her hands tight around the railing, a light coating of red rubbing free in her palms. How dare Dia fetishize her trauma? It’s like she doesn’t care, hasn’t connected the dots with Vee’s fear, with her insomnia, with her nausea and the burning ringing in her ears that sometimes leaves her bedridden for days. But Dia isn’t stupid, she’s thoughtless. Maybe even cruel. Vee sucks in a lungful of the ocean air, so deep her chest aches with it and then releases her breath with a groan. She doesn’t like fixating like this but with the nightmares and her coming blood, with Dia not quite missing, it’s difficult not to. 

Vee chips at a barnacle growing along the railing, too high on the ship and too large to have formed there naturally. She’s seen them before, when the tide rolls in from somewhere unreachable by human shores. They scatter across the ship, quick to appear and quicker to vanish. So she barely winces when the “beak” of the barnacle snaps open, revealing a small watery yellow eye that watches her with a quiet suspicion. She picks it off, crushes the shell with her thumb and forefinger and flicks it into the water. A thin liquid runs down her wrist, reeking of sea salt and rotted wood, no doubt a promise of underwater treasure, waiting in a long forgotten chest just under the roughening waves. 

She hates that she understands, that she can interpret their alien thought process, the obscure hints in the glamours they send her. She doesn’t want to think like them, knows how little others do. 

Only the survivors ever can, the ones who have touched a proper circle. The ones who have danced among them. 

Vee rubs the powdered rust across her palm and the scent vanishes. It was probably never there, just planted in her mind by something too weak to handle the touch of iron upon its spell. 

Brushing her hand against her thigh, Vee turns back to the door. This isn’t the easiest place to make a home, their lives are touched daily with reminders of the Fae, but she still feels lucky to have found it. Just a few years ago, they were barely scrapping by in the bowels of the city. 

Vee was working any bit job she could get her hands on and at fourteen, Dia was getting prettier and bolder by the day. She is still frivolous and drunk on the abandon of youth but at least she’s safe when she’s home, guarded from one side by metal and the other by the fear of a wild sea. 

The door closes with a pained groan. Vee tries not to wince.   
…

The weather stays cold and the fishing isn’t pleasant. With a protein rich meal heavy in her stomach, Vee sets to work. Fishing line is precious, anything from the old world is, so she is careful with her resource. She checks that each rig is set far enough apart to avoid underwater currents drifting and tangling the painstakingly gathered lines. She monitors each set up, careful to never leave a hook unattended for too long. 

Still, each catch is maybe one in twenty. The fish that rise to the surface are sickly, some too small to justify keeping and others mutated, twisted fins or bulging third eyes. She can still sell these, but only a certain type of person will risk touching something possibly cursed. 

Vee stares down at her latest catch, looks into the large brown eyes, the humanoid pupils dilating in fear. Eating anything with human eyes is too far, even for her, and she tosses the pathetic creature back into the sea. A hand lifts up and snatches it from the air before it can hit the water. 

Oh no. She recognizes that hand, has seen those long graceful fingers, the fragile webbing stringing between them like cobwebs. She groans when he surfaces, glaring down at the malicious smile glistening back at her. 

“Good morning.” The man calls up to her, acting in all the world like this is a casual conversation.   
“Morning.” Vee fears them like all the others but this one has been circling their boat for months now and she has lost her patience. 

“Wonderful to see you.” The man’s hair is long, fanning out on the water in long, jet black spirals. He sounds friendly but he is doing nothing to disguise the sharpness of his smile, the salivating pleasure of taunting something he considers lesser. He is a predator, and a sadistic one at that. 

“Are you hear for some of my catch?” Vee leans forward, hiding her distaste just the slightest bit more than he is hiding his hunger. The fairy laughs, drops the fish as he lifts two muscular arms upwards. 

“Catch? Yes I’ll catch you, just jump in. The water is warmer than the air today.” His voice is delicious, a honey melody that dips from her throat to low in her gut. A tiny part of her wants to jump. Vee smears her hand across the railing, brushing rust across her forearms and at the hollow of her throat. The desire fades, replaced with a wave of nausea. 

“I’m good up here, thanks.” She smiles down, the expression mimicking his own. No warmth, nothing sincere. Only teeth and distaste. 

His voice is lovely but he isn’t. The Fae are known for being beautiful, impossibly so. Glowing skin, silken hair, eyes so bright and piercing that their gaze alone is enough to leave you weakened to their will. But he is anything but alluring. His skin matches the murky water surrounding him, a sickly green blue coated with an overcast gray. Long wicked spines sprout from the back of his neck, arching down until they vanish in the darkened water. 

“Join me for once, for old times sake.” Vee has been wondering if he was at the circle, has recognized an a old toy and decided to play with it once again but she can’t be certain. She wears her mark like faerie sight, bluish veins forever distended just beneath her earlobes, jolting down her neck like the icy vines. He is most likely a stranger, taunting an easy victim. Vee honestly doesn’t know which is worse. She doesn’t remember him but that doesn’t say much.

His face is long, angular to the point of severity, and slashed through with a sharp, cruel mouth. Only his slanted eyes have a traditional sense of beauty, the sole comfort in a being who’s attraction stems from something entirely alien. He is still tempting but so unfamiliar it is like gazing into a bottomless trench. Beautiful but every instinct screams for Vee to back away. 

The faerie smirks at her response, something unseen beneath him whirling the water into an agitated foam. She wonders if he has a tail or tentacles. Maybe neither, maybe he’s just trying to be frightening. She wouldn’t put it past him to use his glamour in such a pointless way. 

The fey are tricksters but this one is more than that, he shows up every few days with a new line, a new hallucination, and the same devil grin. 

“It must be so dull toiling away in that iron box. Doesn’t it make your skin crawl, don’t you just want to peel it off and cleanse yourself in the brine?” His hands twitch, sharp fingers still reaching upwards, imploring. “I could help.” 

Vee shudders and brushes the rust a little rougher across her arms. He winces when she does so, lowering his arms slightly. The little tufts of frothy white surrounding him begin to fade. 

“Thank you for the offer but I have no interest in something so painful.” Another barnacle has blinked awake beside her, glancing nervously between her and her unwanted guest.

He looks almost hurt, hands curling in on themselves with the same dying tension of a half crushed spider. “ It doesn’t have to hurt.” His voice is lower, quiet. 

Vee flicks the barnacle off the railing, watches it splash into the water with a small wince. The fay doesn’t break eye contact, just lets his hands fall fully into the sea. His mouth has pulled tight, a faded scar stretched taut across his pallid face. 

“I am still not interested.” 

“It is your choice.” His voice is quieter now, colder and no longer tantalizing. “But I will ask again.” The water around him suddenly boils, rolling waves that burst upwards in agitated froth. A long spindly tail whips through the foam, bursting outwards as he throws himself back, a gray form in a grayer sea, quick to vanish into the bottomless gloom. 

A cold wind whips up, tugging strands of hair from Vee’s braid, tangling in her lashes and clinging to her salt chapped lips. She releases a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Her heart is in her throat but there’s nothing to do but move on. To her left, a line tugs, a potential meal thrashing about on the other end. Her day is far from over. Vee gets to work. 

…


	2. Chapter 2

It’s 4 a.m. The ship is creaking, echoing, low groans of ancient metal made by long dead hands. Outside the wind is howling, the waves are beating against the dock. Dia still isn’t home yet. 

She’s stayed out late before but Vee knows for a fact that the faux circles end at 2 a.m. She’s not still dancing or even still making her way home. The club is maybe twenty minutes into the city, just on the edge enough for the patrons to feel like they’re tempting the fae but still deep enough in iron to be safe. They like the illusion. That’s all the faux circles ever are, nothing but bright, hungry glamours made by human hands and the memory of magic. 

Vee has one shoe on, the other sitting lonesome by the door. She doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to treat her sister like a child and definitely does not want to meet any other fetishists.

She taps her heels, one hard click and one soft, the loud forceful sensation of taking control, leaving the ship, searching or the muted thump of waiting for things to work out of their own. 

Honestly, either choice would be better than this. This waiting, this uncertainty. Should or shouldn’t she? The wind howls, outside she can still feel the vicious wake left behind from that fae’s latest visitation, can still feel the aftershocks of his presence. She wants to stay inside, in the safe haven that is this iron box but her heart keeps fucking leaving and she can do nothing to stop her. 

A sharp crack of thunder reverberates through the ship. 

Another after effect of the fae has been unpredictable weather, storms that crash down from nowhere, snow that drifts in with the sweet scent of a blooming meadow but burns tiny perfect pinpricks into any exposed skin. The climate outside is just another mood swing, quick and sudden and almost perfectly matched to the turmoil writhing in her mind. Sometimes the universe really does have good timing.

Vee isn’t laughing. 

Another crash, louder, pulls her from her circling deliberation. At first it felt like thunder but as three people stumble inside, the metal door swinging viciously from where it connected, it becomes abundantly clear that something else has burst in her life, not just a roaring cloud overhead. 

“Veeee, hey.” 

Dia, in all her drunken splendor, is drapped over two men Vee has never seen before. Her multicolored dreads are tangled, dripping forward to hide a drunken grin. It’s upsetting but even with the fear and stress of Dia’s absence, it feels nice to see her smile like that. That no holds barred grin, the one she used to wear so beautifully as a child, has been steadily vanishing as she grew. Seeing it now, even brought forth from something Vee desperately disapproves of…it’s nice. 

“Where the he...” The spark of pleasure from seeing her sister happy can’t erase the steadily building anger at Dia’s casual irrisponsability. She gets a quarter reprimand out before Dia cuts her off. 

“Do we have the proposition for you!” 

The man on her left laughs, hitching her arm a little higher. He looks like a typical fetishist, though larger than she’s used to. His limbs aren’t wasted away, sinewy and narrow from dancing without an appetite for countless hours but his gold and green tattoos, swirling out in natural spirals across his dark cheeks, are classic signs. He probably got them at one of the shows, a messily made insignia scratched out in metallic inks.  
Dia drops her arms, bracing herself for the ever present gentle roll of the ship beneath her feet and stumbles towards her sister. 

She catches herself on Vee’s chair, glancing over her single bare foot with a knowing laugh. 

“Coming to get me?” 

Before she can respond, Dia clumsily shushes her. Her finger is glittery, smearing faux pixy dust across Vee’s lower lip. She jerks away, glowering and wipes it against the back of her hand. It smells like adrenaline and perfume, like colors and the way lights flash across polished surfaces. It is an impossible scent, definitely a human glamour and the flash of rage at that realization makes Vee lick her lip and spit, not content with just rubbing away the sensation. 

Dia is already talking, completely oblivious to the daggers in Vee’s glare. 

“…And these guys were dancing with them, Stracha was playing the flute and he’s fucking amazing at it by the way, absolutely glamour, and so we got to talking and they know a guy who would pay double, triple maybe. Just think, we could actually shop at the markets, fix up the ship, you wouldn’t have to worry about every single line and maybe get an actual rig, like you wouldn’t have to just fucking smash everything together and hope it works.”

She’s rambling, eyes blown wide with excitement and Vee’s certain, something foreign pumping through her veins.

“Just think Veebee! Think how great it would be.” 

And she waits, both hands clasped painfully tight over Vee’s shoulders. 

The first half of Dia’s words are a jumble, nothing but excited sounds in Vee’s memories. She shrugs out of her sister’s hands, sending a quick glance over the two men now standing almost awkwardly behind her before returning her attention to her near shaking sibling.

“Dia, start again. What do you want?” She shakes her head and fists her hand in her hair, trying to pull herself back to the present. What is she going on about now?

Dia’s wrinkles her nose in frustration but sighs and sits upright. She knows by now how to address her sister if she wants to be taken seriously and Vee can actually see her falling into character. 

“He wants the mutated fish, Vee. He can’t buy them at the market and he wants to get them straight from the source,’ She grins a little, biting the corner of her lip despite her attempt at a calmer demeaner. ‘No bullshit, he just wants guaranteed Touched.” 

A small rock hits the pit of Vee’s stomach with a splash. 

“He…He what?” She can’t wrap her head around the words coming out of Dia’s mouth. Who would want cursed fish? Who could hold that tragic little bass, fearfully watching her with human eyes and think of dinner? She feels nauseous at the very thought of it. 

Dia mistakes her silence for consideration and her earlier giddiness returns. “I know! It’s perfect, not only will we not be throwing back half our haul but he’ll pay MORE!”   
The two men behind her have started talking amongst themselves, the sort of quiet small talk two people play at to pretend they’re not listening to the conversation at hand. Vee bristles. 

“Stratcha says he wants to meet as soon as possible, we could be selling them by tomorrow night if we hurry, he can set up a meeting and…” 

“No!” Vee finally breaks through her horror, jolting from her seated position, hands clenched into fists and nearly shaking. “Absolutely not.”

Dia jerks back, falling back on her hands at her sisters explosive reaction. 

“We don’t know what happened to those fish, where they’ve been, WHO they’ve been.” All her protests come out at once, a jumble of disbelief and fury. 

“We could attract attention if we stop throwing them back, Dia. It isn’t just disapproving humans we have to think about, They are used to us throwing them back. What will They do if we suddenly stop?” 

She’s shouting now and normally showing this level of emotion if front of strangers would be embarrassing but with the storm raging outside and the absolute madness of Dia’s suggestion, Vee doesn’t care. Let them watch. Let Dia be shamed in front of her friends. 

“How did you become so selfish? So thoughtless?” Dia’s face is turning a bright red but she remains silent, matching Vee’s furious stare with her own. A thousand more reprimands and insults bite at Vee’s tongue but they stick, clinging with barbs until she is silenced by their multitude. 

The room falls silent, even the false conversation of the two men stutters out at Vee’s outburst. 

Outside a wave crashes against the ship’s side, rocking the boat with it’s force. The wind has been howling, thunder crashing and jagged bolts of lightning bursting light through the storm weathered windows but it isn’t until two angry tears spill down Dia’s cheeks that Vee becomes aware of the rain pouring outside. 

It beats down, thick sheets of water muting the sound of her younger sister stumbling to her feet, her overblown eyes still too bright but now blood shot and watery. Vee can’t hear the hitch in her breath but she see’s Dia’s chest rise and fall with the force of it. Pouring rain erases the sound of her hurried steps, the careful words of the two strangers as they pat Dia’s back, or the sharp response mumbled through an arm wiping tears and snot away from a puffy face. Waves of water sloshing back over and down the deck silence the sound of the door being pulled forcefully open. 

It is the rain she hears as the door slams shut and not the sound of her sister, crying and blind, running back out into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

It takes about an hour of angry pacing for Vee to realize what she’s done. 

Twenty minutes to run through every awful scenario, every cursed fish she’s ever caught and the sickening image of blunted teeth biting into crisped scales. The haunting eyes, the human tongue stuttering out half words, the impossible colors swirling in runes over franticly twisting tails. Just the disgust clouds her mind for a long while, a horror movie spiraling outward in a thousand different tendrils.

Then there are the twenty minutes of imagined arguments, first just different insults to cut Dia down, every cruel word she knows used again and again until she finds just the right combination that would have devastated her sister if she’d only had the quick wit to think of them…and then slowly, as she breathes, the debates she could have used to try to show Dia just how sick her suggestion really was. To reason with her, to help. 

The last twenty minutes are just to calm down. First, it is nothing but carefully controlled deep breathing through clenched teeth, running her hands through her hair and circling the scene of the crime. She listens to the water and tries to count her heart beats, forces out each lungful until she manages to exhale without shaking. 

And then there is nothing. 

Nothing but the slow gradual chill as her anger fades away and dread sets in. As the heat in her cheeks burns out and replaces the adrenaline with tired shivers, triggered by the cold ocean air but brought to action by the aftershock of their fight. 

Where did Dia go?

Vee doesn’t know Dia’s friends, tries not to in fact. She stays away from the city, overwhelmed by the leering presence of the half rotted skyscrapers and the press of too many people. As much as she fears the sea, Vee finds comfort in it as well. The quiet, the natural presence of it. It’s blissful. 

She wishes she had a sister that felt the same. 

So where? With those two men that she basically stated she met tonight? To some third party that Vee doesn’t even know of?

Vee stops pacing and turns to the cold steel of the ship, letting her head fall against the calming metal. It soothes the ache in her skull even as the icy sting of it cuts into her skin. 

She needs to go search for her sister but she doesn’t even know where to start. It’s exactly how she felt an hour ago but even worse. At least beforehand she had a clue, the faux circles, but the dances are long over and now there’s nothing out there but darkness and a city full of absolute strangers. Dia is as gone as she could possibly be, vanished like a changeling in the night. 

…

Eventually she decides she should wait for Dia here. There is nowhere to start, no points where she might have a higher chance of finding her. The decision is the right one (she hopes) but where her mind agrees, her heart still stutters out a panicked staccato. Sleep is a pipe dream. Rest is even further out of her grasp. 

Vee’s bed is small, a ragged old thing dragged through the narrow doors of the ship years before, but it’s familiar and with familiarity comes comfort. She curls up in her heavy sheets, faded and stiff from the salty air and desperately plans out her morning. A clear head would be the most useful, a mind not addled by exhaustion and what if scenarios but she knows herself well enough to settle for the second best. She can’t prepare the way she ought to so she preps the only way she can, working her way through the imagined future. 

There’s the market, Dia’s favorite place, too crowded and central for Vee to appreciate but a good starting point. She loved it as a kid, running through the tight press of humanity, ogling the various wares for sale that Vee never had the money for. And she mentioned it tonight, giddy at the chance of satisfying a childhood desire. Vee presses her face into her pillow, exhaling a almost silent groan. Why is she so immature? Is it Vee’s fault? The way she was raised?

Dia wanted a ruby apple the last time they visited. 

Vee realizes that now. 

At the time she seemed to only be interested, glancing over the glistening fruit as if the bright gleam of it alone had caught her eye. She barely lingered but with the desire in her plea still fresh in Vee’s memories, Dia’s expression is clearer now. 

Longing.

She wanted it even as the masses passed the hunched vender by. 

He was old, a little too old for comfort, time being a rare commodity in this day and age. Most everyone knew not to trust him, to leave his commonplace fruit as thoroughly untouched as his cursed ones. “We must not buy their fruits.” It’s a childhood rhythm they all know. Yet still Dia wanted, still her slender fingers brushed against the worn wood of the mans stall. Vee remembers giving her a reproachful stare and watching that reaching touch wither under her judgement, her sister’s fingers curling inward like budding life under a blistering sun. 

It was the right thing to do but Vee is still uneasy with the visual. She wants her sister to blossom but how can she if she can’t dream, if simple pleasures are too dangerous to be tolerated? 

The old man was small too, quick on his feet as he carefully arranged the small bounty before him. His smile was wicked, sharp glints of quicksilver in the flickering light of the marketplace. He reaches a hand out to Dia and his sixth finger bears a tiny ring, digging tight into the distorted digit. 

Mutations are a dime a dozen here but there’s something about that twisted little finger that sets her off. The way the old skin seems to tighten as he reaches for her only family, the way the rest of the fingers grow, extending with the quiet, unsettling pops of joints dislocating and reforming. It is the webbing that spreads spiderweb thin as his hand stretched that finally pushed Vee forward but she’s too late. The old man is gone and in his place, clutching her beautiful sister tight to his naked chest, is the merman. 

His skin is more purple than she’s seen before and when she lurches closer she can see why. Bruises bleed out across his shoulders, over his forearms and drip down his hips like an attacker has painted him with their blows. Even as he grins at her, clutching his prize while his fruits fester around him, she can see pain in his eyes. He holds on as Dia struggles, adding her own marks to his unwanted masterpiece. Behind him his fruit is blistering over, shining boils swelling up on the luscious skin and bursting, filling the air with sweat and rot.

“Stop hurting me!” Dia’s arm is red where he is holding her, her long hair has been pinned down between her back and his chest, forcing her head to twist at a unnatural angle, and she can see one of her dreads as been torn out, tossed like a colorful rope into the sizzling bile still bubbling in his marketplace stall. 

She is in pain but her words aren’t directed at the man holding her back. They are directed at Vee. 

“Please.” Two ruby red tears drip down Dia’s cheeks and the merman finishes her sentence for her, the voice deeper but the pain in his message still very much the same. 

“Please, stop hurting me.”  
...

Vee awakens to fog bleached morning light, her world exsanguinated by a colorless sun. Her pulse pounds in her throat as the echos of her dream encompass the room. Two voices, one beloved, the other despised, each begging for mercy. 

Details drain from her mind with each harried breath but one aspect remains. One thing is clear.

Vee slides her cold feet out from under her adrenaline warmed sheets and onto the chilled floor of her ship. 

She might be too late to answer her sisters plea but Vee knows it's not too late to make it right.


End file.
